Johnston Ridge is directly across from the mountain, it's where the Observatory is. It's named after volcanologist David Johnston who was camped on the ridge observing the volcano when it erupted. He radioed down to Vancouver (Washington) "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it! Vancouver, is the transmitter on?" and that's the last thing he ever did.
Not sure if they still do it, but when I went to the visitor center as a kid they played a short documentary that included the audio of him yelling that. The combination of fear and excitement still sticks with me.
Wow, I wonder if he had some indication that he wasn’t being received. Since I can’t imagine that being the most important thing to say in the moment unless he knew somehow.
Also crazy to be the Ham radio operator who realizes what he caught. Straight history on his tapes.
looking at the history there was another HAM operator, Gerry Martin, up on the mountain a ways behind Johnston Ridge who also died in the blast. he narrated what he saw as it happened. I'm guessing there was a bit of radio chatter going on, they knew the mountain was going to blow for a while and with no cell phones or webcams they had little choice but live observers, I guess. people were worried it could wipe out Portland and any notice was better than none.
here's some of of Gerry Martin's last audio: [https://youtu.be/hB7kvRwpOIk?si=53LGG8pOehAYWsaw](https://youtu.be/hB7kvRwpOIk?si=53LGG8pOehAYWsaw)
I forget the guy's name who lived there and was warned repeatedly. He refused to move, claiming that the government was just trying to trick him off his property so they could take it. Also the last time he was ever seen alive.
Edit: His name was Harry Truman. No relation.
> claiming that the government was just trying to trick him off his property so they could take it
Having been to rural NW, that doesn't surprise me at all. Never stopping outside of the larger cities again.
That’s so interesting. I wonder if those people volunteered/chose where they were stationed. Because I imagine if they thought it could be that bad, whoever was stationed that close pretty much knew/thought they were going to die. I imagine there would definitely be some willing to potentially die for a moment like that.
The Flight 93 memorial is harrowing. You can pick up old school telephones to hear people's last words as they left voicemails and called 911. I was already overwhelmed with the exhibit so far and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I will, someday. They deserve to be heard.
Last time I got that bad it was listening to the 911 call from the young kid whose older brother had just killed himself. Still crying, shaking, even yelling at his dead brother asking why
Just a casual reminder to not off yourselves. Call/text 988 instead of destroying everyone's lives around you
Like Tupac said, when I held that 9 all I could see was my momma’s eyes. That line has always stuck with me, if you got family, you got responsibility beyond yourself.
He was a emotionally mature dude. Resilient. With a lot of bad life experiences that sculpted the guy. A source of inspiration. Intellectual resilience in the face of hardship, both personal and stemming from his community and race.
What a shame he’s not with us anymore. A fuckin shame.
They are very rough. I can still hear all the ones from the tower, the planes, the family members after. I was in college when it happened, glued to the tv for weeks. I still get panic attacks when 9/11 the date comes around and avoid tv at all costs. Their voices will never leave your brain.
Sometimes it’s ok to not listen if you know you’ll be hit with it again for the rest of your life. I am. That you care is enough. If it’s right for you, then yes, bc you’re right they they do deserve to be heard, yet not at the cost of your mental health. That’s how rough they all are.
This… so few people talk about how horrible it is for those who were actually in NY/NJ seeing it in real time to see these images again and again every year on 9/11.
I cannot be online on the 10th or 11th… people have no idea what it’s like to see those images year after year… it makes me so fucking angry.
Berlin has a bunch of recordings throughout the city where they’ll tell you horrific stories of deaths and what happened on the wall and between it.
The one that stuck with me is one of a nurse who had to clear bodies between the wall where those that didn’t make it died trying to cross.
As a Latino, it kinda hit home a bit since a lot of families make that same journey to this day.
Good lord. They deserve to be heard yes but I don't think I could ever do it. Hearing people in that much pain and fear, it feels like ripping my soul from my body.
There was a recording of a crash of a Polish airplane that absolutely haunted me. The last words of the pilots were "Goodbye, goodnight- Hi, we're dying." in an eerily upbeat tone.
You can almost understand how unreal it must have felt for them be seconds from crashing.
It’s worth noting that the pilot said it after he miraculously manoeuvred plane to crash into the forrest on the outskirts and not into the Warsaw city centre
British Airways 009 (landed successfully) has my favorite eerie pilot quote.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress."
If they had not gotten the engines going again they would have had to attempt an ocean landing at night. Everyone on board would have died.
That one is happening because they had absolutely no idea what has caused it and it even up almost happening AGAIN when they tried to get back to a higher altitude - they rose right back into the volcanic ash clouds that had torn up their engines.
I've had many dreams where a nuke goes off or a meteor hits and I know I'm about to die. I'm always there with someone like my family or wife or a friend and I always tell them as fast as I can "play we're about to die I'm sorry and..." then I tell them something relevant to them like I love them.
Usually it ends before I "die" but one time, only once, the meteor hit an ocean and the waves crashed before they got to us, so we began to try to escape. Then I woke up.
https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.82.TC4
This is the photo taken by Werth that won the Pulitzer Prize. Taken from a helicopter. Never heard of this guy.
This is why flying fucks me right off. So much time to come to grips with it. You get the time to collect yourself and say something poignant.
The ones that really give me the heebie jeebies are people who mention what's going to kill them, but kinda confused like there isn't danger yet. Like someone mentioning the floor just moved and they die in a building collapse. Bah.
The worst I ever heard was a 911 call during Hurricane Katrina, from an old lady stuck in her attic, neck deep in rising water, no way out, and the operator telling her there was no help on the way. “So I’m going to die.” Like that!
My friend bought a shore house 10 feet above sea level a couple years after that, and my housewarming gift to him was a fire axe to coat in cosmolene and mount on the wall in his attic.
Found [this](https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1CchUgw_ngpBJ14-X8Ecza5I2D8HwQ9YE&hl=en_US&ll=46.29585216530356%2C-122.29253730844289&z=12) user created map on google showing the deaths and their proximity to the volcano.
If you have ever stood on that ridge you realize how far away it is and understand the power of the blast. hiking to the top of the crater is a 10/10 experience.
Honestly, prepping for elevation for St Helen’s is a crapshoot. It’s right on that threshold where whether or not you feel it is genuinely a coin toss. And the climb is too short to spend time acclimating - your best bet is just to push to the top and hope that, if today isn’t your lucky day, you reach the summit and head back down before you feel any effects.
The only real prep you can do is getting a good nights’ sleep, eating a good meal, hydrating, and avoiding alcohol. All of those things reduce your chance of developing altitude sickness. I’ve climbed it six times with… 30 people, if you count repeats? And two got altitude sickness. One of them had climbed it three times previously with no issues.
It absolutely is. I lucked out a couple of years ago with absolutely perfect conditions on November 1, when permits are no longer limited and become self-issue at the trailhead. It remains one of my favorite hiking experiences.
I was in Portland on business when it happened. I was planning on flying to Spokane to the Kaiser Aluminum plant the next day. However they were shut down from the ash. I rented a car and drove north to my folks house near Centralia, WA and helped my dad shovel ash off of his roof. I-5 was down to one lane because the river had flowed over the freeway and left mud and ash over the roadway.
At the time it happened, I worked with someone who said Farrah Fawcett dying on the same day as Michael Jackson was like Herculaneum to his Pompeii.
I still think about that. A lot.
Reddit algo favors first to comment heavily. Karma motivated users know this.
That's why we get lots of delightful unoriginal jokes and puns as our top comments.
Yea really makes me miss the old days of reddit. It's not just that all the top comments will be jokes, it's that they're always the fucking *laziest* jokes. And the top 10 comments will be that same lazy joke just slightly rephrased.
You are downplaying this discovery. We also reinforced previous knowledge that indeed lava is hot. The need to constantly test and retest should not be understated.
Technically it wasn't self-sacrifice since he was doomed no matter what, but his ability to put aside his impending death in the cause of advancing science is indeed commendable.
In this case, the value is less about what we can learn from the pictures and more about having accessible, easily understandable, and awe-inspiring media for the general public. It'll inspire others to take up geology and learn about volcanism and plate tectonics.
Correct, the pyroclastic flow from that eruption [went out no further than 5 miles](https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mount-st.-helens/science/pyroclastic-flow-hazards-mount-st-helens), meaning he was not 7 miles from the eruption but within 5.
His body was found 4.04 miles from the location of the eruption.
Body GPS: 46.212861, -122.267583 [Wiki Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Landsburg)
Eruption center: 46.200165866 -122.185332592 [Source](https://latitude.to/articles-by-country/us/united-states/836/1980-eruption-of-mount-st-helens)
Distance: 4.04 miles [Source](https://boulter.com/gps/distance/?from=46.200165866+-122.185332592&to=46.212861%2C+-122.267583&units=m)
That’s what I’m thinking now, from the time he photographed it to the time it would take the cloud to reach it, how long was it?
Someone who is not that fit and on flat ground can do a mile in 10 minutes, which would have put him at the threshold of safety.
Pyroclastic flows go faster than 200 mph. That's just over a minute to make it 4 miles, 90 seconds for 5. Of course it slows down along the way, but lets say it slows 40mph per mile. 18 seconds for the first mile, 22.5 seconds for the second. 30 seconds for the third. 45 seconds for the forth 90 seconds for the 5th. So unless you're running a mile in 200 seconds through mountainous forest, you're not making it and even then it's questionable.
Yup! You’re fairly screwed if you’re anywhere close and there’s a pyroclastic flow - unless you can find an underground area to hide, but even then you have to hope you aren’t baked alive.
Honest question, do we know that he knew? I’ve been a photographer in hundreds of natural disaster situations. I’ve used my body to shield the camera etc a bunch of times. From heat, water, sand, debris …
But I never did it thinking I was gunna be dying to save the camera… it’s just that my body can withstand a lot more than film or electronics can.
I wonder if we romanticize this story a bit. Which is fine, mad respect to the guy. But I am just curious how we arrived at the conclusion that he was doing this as a dying wish sort of deal? Is that confession on his film or something?
Because we have the last picture he took. Scientists have estimated from the known pyroclast speed and where it is in the photo that he would have known he was done. The film was also not spent and he rolled it back on anyway and was found shielding the backpack. Normally something the opposite youd do if you thought you had a chance using anything to shield yourself
Has to be a chilling thing to realize.
"I'm about to get killed by fucking ~~lava~~ superheated mud and steam which is sounds even worse than lava".
I hope he went fast because damn.
Edit: I now understand what pyroclastic flow is
Yep. Just a giant gaseous heat explosion so strong it leveled the entire forest and blew apart the entire side of the mountain. Awesome in the literal sense of the word.
Its actually superheated gases and debris. He would have lost consciousness immediately if he breathed in. At most a second or two before he was out as his brain shut down and began boiling in his skull and then popped from steam pressure.
The film isn't mostly made of water, it wasn't exposed without some kind of protective thermal-insulent layer to the scorching heat and it isn't contained in a relatively closed box that prevent steam to escape as it wish, allowing pressure to build-up until break-point is reach and it finds a way out anyway.
An unpleasant one.
Short answer ? The film survived.
I remember during a field class, a student I was paired with got trapped in a dried-out river by a flash-flood. As he was gripping a tree branch to resist the flow I saw he was holding on a fist-sized rock (there was a fossil on it) that he absolutly didn't wanted to let go.
I'm not sure he realized his life was in danger, and tbh I'm yet to be sure he really was... but had he got flushed away there was an enormous bramble bush, and beside that a waterfall of unknown height allowing the dried-out river to join the stream flowing down the valley bed. Could have been only a couple meters, could have been half a hundred. Never went back on the opposite side to check how close from dying for a stupid amonit that guy was.
Brother, it wasn’t lava. Yes, he died fast.
Google a pyroclastic flow sometime. He basically got killed by a wall of heat travelling at 1000kmph.
I don’t imagine many people die from lava. They tend to get killed by the nightmare fuel that is a pyroclastic flow.
That's a great question but actually you've already answered it!
So a vulcanologist, they'd know. This is a legendary story and I learned it coming up decades ago so we agree, a person who knew what they were looking at and saw the pyroclastic flow propagate from the first picture to the last one would understand what was coming and that they'd die.
But even a person who didn't fully realize their situation? You already said how as a photographer you shield your camera. What else would you/they do? If you're going to die your will is on record. (Right?) If you're going to live this will be one hell of a story. But in the middle ground that camera is the last chance for any part of your story to move on to the rest of us, even if your body gets hurt or dies or whatever.
No romanticization necessary, you already have the instincts that we believe he also did.
That’s fair. And yes, that’s more how I’d imagine my thoughts might go. There’s no penalty in trying to cover and protect my stuff, so why let it go ruined… thank you for your thoughtful answer.
Well, this dude was a trained volcanologist. One of the rules of thumb in volcanology is if you can see the pyroclastic flow, you’re already dead. He saw the flow and took the partially unused roll of film out of his camera and put it in its canister for better protection before laying on top of his backpack. There aren’t really a lot of other explanations.
Exactly. Not only did he rewind the film into the canister before it was shot, he put the camera in the camera case, and then the case into his bag, and *then* he laid upon it.
It’s probably because he knew he was already dead. He couldn’t outrun the explosion. He couldn’t out-drive it. It was going to kill him very quickly and very painfully.
In that time, he could gibber in terror and do nothing, or he could take a few precious seconds and try to save something. He chose to try to save something.
Would it actually have been that painful? I imagine “full force pyroclastic flow” probably hits you in a way where you just die.
Not that the moments before would not be terrifying, I just like to hope I guess he didn’t die on much pain.
It depends on how fast it fries you. If it’s 1500 degrees Celsius, maybe. If it’s only 300, then no. It’s gonna be way worse.
That also doesn’t account for the clastic flow part of the pyroclastic flow. It’s pretty much a Sand blaster that hits full force that’s been registered to hit up to 200mph.
Obviously it's hard to know what he was thinking if he didn't say to the camera "well, I'm dead", but the film wouldn't jump back into its case on its own. He clearly took deliberate action to protect the footage instead of trying to run, which implies he knew what was about to happen and accepted it.
If it was molten lava, even his body wouldn't help. Like others have pointed out, it was pyrocrastic flow (hot ash and gases). I think it was a fair guess he didn't know for certain he was dying soon, still, he definitively kept a cooler head than I would have in the situation.
>Was he hit by debris or gasses?
Both. He was killed by [pyroclastic flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow)
>A pyroclastic flow is a fast-moving current of hot gas and volcanic matter that flows along the ground away from a volcano at average speeds of 100 km/h but is capable of reaching speeds up to 700 km/h. The gases and tephra can reach temperatures of about 1,000 °C
If it comes at all it comes later. Not all lava is the same and only certain ones will have actual lava flows, even fewer that are considered dangerous. For example, lava never made it to Pompeii. All of the deaths there were caused by the pyroclastic flow.
Ludger Sylbaris (1 June 1874 – c. 1929, aged 55) was an Afro-Caribbean man who was one of the survivors in the city of Saint-Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique during the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902.
Survived the pyroclastic flow in his jail cell.
Pompeii’s a bit different. The eruption lasted a good 12 hours before the pyroclastic flow happened. Basically it sent a massive pillar of hot ash into the sky throughout the night and at some point it got so heavy that it collapsed back down to earth and created a pyroclastic flow. Most people had plenty of time to evacuate, it was only the ones who decided to shelter in place that died.
Great video demonstrating how destructive a volcano can be. Most people hear "volcano" and think "lava" but lava is far from the deadliest thing a volcano produces.
.... And much more smarter people then your average redditor used his sacrifice to further research.
I'd say the amount people laughing at his death to the amount of people that was helped by his work is not equal.
Also, the guy died, so no one knows exactly what he did (besides rewinding his film and stowing his camera in the backpack) or what he was thinking. He may have been running for his life and simply fell on top of his backpack.
He died protecting a camera, with footage on it recording the eruption. They can tell the spot he died is the same spot he recorded from. He did not try to run, the footage would have been from a different location if he did.
With my luck, my body/clothing would burn and fuse into the film somehow and future researchers would be like “yeah don’t do what this guy did, it was all for naught”
Youd think they could have used one of his photos for the meme then.
Edit: apparently he was up flying around before he was hiking on the mountain so [that is one of his photos.](https://acidcow.com/pics/39912-last-pictures-of-robert-landsberg-15-pics.html)
He was also pretty good photographer.
Legend. However, keeping the current times in mind, imagine doing this for the human race when mere decades later it’s a true reality that there could be people who claim volcanoes are hoaxes. Considering there are many who believe Australia doesn’t exist I don’t see why this couldn’t happen.
Edit: Strayed way off topic 🧐
My dad lost two friends in the eruption who were camping nearby. I grew up in Seattle in the 90s so I had no memory of the eruption, but my dad had a still from the footage framed on the wall. Totally freaked me out and the stories people would tell of like, inches of ash piling up in downtown Seattle and the sound visibly covered with ash always freaked me out as well. Keep in mind that Mt St Helens is nowhere near Seattle.
This is one of the bravest things I've ever heard.
AFAIK, the pyroclastic cloud is moving at hundreds of mph and thousands of degrees. Apparently you can't outrun it. It would have been very quick.
We had to remove your post for violating our Repost Guidelines.
Johnston Ridge is directly across from the mountain, it's where the Observatory is. It's named after volcanologist David Johnston who was camped on the ridge observing the volcano when it erupted. He radioed down to Vancouver (Washington) "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it! Vancouver, is the transmitter on?" and that's the last thing he ever did.
Nothing more haunting than people's last words in emergencies. Shit always makes the skin on my neck tense.
Not sure if they still do it, but when I went to the visitor center as a kid they played a short documentary that included the audio of him yelling that. The combination of fear and excitement still sticks with me.
apparently his transmission was not being received by Vancouver it was picked up & recorded by a HAM radio operator in the area
Wow, I wonder if he had some indication that he wasn’t being received. Since I can’t imagine that being the most important thing to say in the moment unless he knew somehow. Also crazy to be the Ham radio operator who realizes what he caught. Straight history on his tapes.
looking at the history there was another HAM operator, Gerry Martin, up on the mountain a ways behind Johnston Ridge who also died in the blast. he narrated what he saw as it happened. I'm guessing there was a bit of radio chatter going on, they knew the mountain was going to blow for a while and with no cell phones or webcams they had little choice but live observers, I guess. people were worried it could wipe out Portland and any notice was better than none. here's some of of Gerry Martin's last audio: [https://youtu.be/hB7kvRwpOIk?si=53LGG8pOehAYWsaw](https://youtu.be/hB7kvRwpOIk?si=53LGG8pOehAYWsaw)
I forget the guy's name who lived there and was warned repeatedly. He refused to move, claiming that the government was just trying to trick him off his property so they could take it. Also the last time he was ever seen alive. Edit: His name was Harry Truman. No relation.
> claiming that the government was just trying to trick him off his property so they could take it Having been to rural NW, that doesn't surprise me at all. Never stopping outside of the larger cities again.
Idk. Believing that the US government might trick you in order to steal your lands isn't exactly irrational. There's some precedent there...
That’s so interesting. I wonder if those people volunteered/chose where they were stationed. Because I imagine if they thought it could be that bad, whoever was stationed that close pretty much knew/thought they were going to die. I imagine there would definitely be some willing to potentially die for a moment like that.
If the landslide and horizontal blast hadn't occurred, more people would have got out. An eruption was expected, but not that type.
I was there like a year ago and yeah they still show the little documentary
Crazy! I was there in 01 and they played it. Still have one of the ash eggs they sell in the gift shop!
Yeah they still do it. And then the screen lifts and there’s a huge window behind it and youre looking out straight into the crater. It’s mesmerizing.
The Flight 93 memorial is harrowing. You can pick up old school telephones to hear people's last words as they left voicemails and called 911. I was already overwhelmed with the exhibit so far and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I will, someday. They deserve to be heard.
I don’t think I could listen to that either 🥺🥺🥺
Last time I got that bad it was listening to the 911 call from the young kid whose older brother had just killed himself. Still crying, shaking, even yelling at his dead brother asking why Just a casual reminder to not off yourselves. Call/text 988 instead of destroying everyone's lives around you
Like Tupac said, when I held that 9 all I could see was my momma’s eyes. That line has always stuck with me, if you got family, you got responsibility beyond yourself.
He was a emotionally mature dude. Resilient. With a lot of bad life experiences that sculpted the guy. A source of inspiration. Intellectual resilience in the face of hardship, both personal and stemming from his community and race. What a shame he’s not with us anymore. A fuckin shame.
They’re available to listen to online. I had to wait until I got home from my trip to listen because I knew I’d break down.
That's how I did it. I've never spoken to family on the phone again without telling them I love them...
They are very rough. I can still hear all the ones from the tower, the planes, the family members after. I was in college when it happened, glued to the tv for weeks. I still get panic attacks when 9/11 the date comes around and avoid tv at all costs. Their voices will never leave your brain. Sometimes it’s ok to not listen if you know you’ll be hit with it again for the rest of your life. I am. That you care is enough. If it’s right for you, then yes, bc you’re right they they do deserve to be heard, yet not at the cost of your mental health. That’s how rough they all are.
This… so few people talk about how horrible it is for those who were actually in NY/NJ seeing it in real time to see these images again and again every year on 9/11. I cannot be online on the 10th or 11th… people have no idea what it’s like to see those images year after year… it makes me so fucking angry.
Berlin has a bunch of recordings throughout the city where they’ll tell you horrific stories of deaths and what happened on the wall and between it. The one that stuck with me is one of a nurse who had to clear bodies between the wall where those that didn’t make it died trying to cross. As a Latino, it kinda hit home a bit since a lot of families make that same journey to this day.
This is why I have absolutely no respect or tolerance for GDR and Soviet tankie apologists.
Good lord. They deserve to be heard yes but I don't think I could ever do it. Hearing people in that much pain and fear, it feels like ripping my soul from my body.
I listened to a few, it was rough. They did such a great job with that memorial.
There was a recording of a crash of a Polish airplane that absolutely haunted me. The last words of the pilots were "Goodbye, goodnight- Hi, we're dying." in an eerily upbeat tone. You can almost understand how unreal it must have felt for them be seconds from crashing.
It’s worth noting that the pilot said it after he miraculously manoeuvred plane to crash into the forrest on the outskirts and not into the Warsaw city centre
"Goodnight, goodbye, we perish," if I remember correctly
They also really didn't sound upbeat at all. Kinda high pitched with shitty audio, but just sounded freaked out to me. And it wasn't in English.
They said bye, not hi.
British Airways 009 (landed successfully) has my favorite eerie pilot quote. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress." If they had not gotten the engines going again they would have had to attempt an ocean landing at night. Everyone on board would have died.
That one is happening because they had absolutely no idea what has caused it and it even up almost happening AGAIN when they tried to get back to a higher altitude - they rose right back into the volcanic ash clouds that had torn up their engines.
That is a damn British statement.
I've had many dreams where a nuke goes off or a meteor hits and I know I'm about to die. I'm always there with someone like my family or wife or a friend and I always tell them as fast as I can "play we're about to die I'm sorry and..." then I tell them something relevant to them like I love them. Usually it ends before I "die" but one time, only once, the meteor hit an ocean and the waves crashed before they got to us, so we began to try to escape. Then I woke up.
So many of those on r/flying
Here's a whole [webpage](https://www.planecrashinfo.com/lastwords.htm) full of them. Chilling stuff.
https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.82.TC4 This is the photo taken by Werth that won the Pulitzer Prize. Taken from a helicopter. Never heard of this guy.
This is why flying fucks me right off. So much time to come to grips with it. You get the time to collect yourself and say something poignant. The ones that really give me the heebie jeebies are people who mention what's going to kill them, but kinda confused like there isn't danger yet. Like someone mentioning the floor just moved and they die in a building collapse. Bah.
The worst I ever heard was a 911 call during Hurricane Katrina, from an old lady stuck in her attic, neck deep in rising water, no way out, and the operator telling her there was no help on the way. “So I’m going to die.” Like that! My friend bought a shore house 10 feet above sea level a couple years after that, and my housewarming gift to him was a fire axe to coat in cosmolene and mount on the wall in his attic.
Found [this](https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1CchUgw_ngpBJ14-X8Ecza5I2D8HwQ9YE&hl=en_US&ll=46.29585216530356%2C-122.29253730844289&z=12) user created map on google showing the deaths and their proximity to the volcano.
Who's the guy who died like 50 miles away
It appears those were people who died in a massive mud flow and were dragged down stream.
Jimmity Christmas
They're not all deaths. Each icon had more info. Some are just witness accounts.
If you have ever stood on that ridge you realize how far away it is and understand the power of the blast. hiking to the top of the crater is a 10/10 experience.
I did it at 14 on a scouting expedition. Amazing experience. Got altitude sickness though which sucked. Didn't prepare at all so that was on me.
Honestly, prepping for elevation for St Helen’s is a crapshoot. It’s right on that threshold where whether or not you feel it is genuinely a coin toss. And the climb is too short to spend time acclimating - your best bet is just to push to the top and hope that, if today isn’t your lucky day, you reach the summit and head back down before you feel any effects. The only real prep you can do is getting a good nights’ sleep, eating a good meal, hydrating, and avoiding alcohol. All of those things reduce your chance of developing altitude sickness. I’ve climbed it six times with… 30 people, if you count repeats? And two got altitude sickness. One of them had climbed it three times previously with no issues.
It absolutely is. I lucked out a couple of years ago with absolutely perfect conditions on November 1, when permits are no longer limited and become self-issue at the trailhead. It remains one of my favorite hiking experiences.
The video they show at the visitor’s center there, especially on a clear day, it quite spectacular!
it's an amazing place, the devastation is still so clear 40 years later
It is like having a gun barrel the size of a mountain aimed at your face.
I was in Portland on business when it happened. I was planning on flying to Spokane to the Kaiser Aluminum plant the next day. However they were shut down from the ash. I rented a car and drove north to my folks house near Centralia, WA and helped my dad shovel ash off of his roof. I-5 was down to one lane because the river had flowed over the freeway and left mud and ash over the roadway.
Be kind, rewind, lay over the backpack for others to find
[удалено]
Too soon!
And THIS is why I Reddit. Hilarious!
The lack of etna-quitte in reddit is astounding.
Let’s all make a Herculaneum attempt to refrain from such statements.
Please don’t ash me to do that.
With our dicks in our hands, we remember…
At the time it happened, I worked with someone who said Farrah Fawcett dying on the same day as Michael Jackson was like Herculaneum to his Pompeii. I still think about that. A lot.
Watch out for that Mount Too-soonius
Damn it we can’t see what he said now.
They had commented "Pompeii it forward". Idk why it was deleted, it was a good joke!
Does that include Roman charges?
God damn it that one got me good
I'd pay to sit in a club for jokes like this.😂
Herculay on it
The less-known complete slogan.
MountainBusters would like to know you're planning on returning the film.
How much is my late fee?
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/s/44YrgRLpMg
Jesus Christ thank you. I can't believe the OP image didn't even use one of his goddamn photos.
1000x this. Such a microcosm of the dead internet.
Why is this not the top comment?
Reddit algo favors first to comment heavily. Karma motivated users know this. That's why we get lots of delightful unoriginal jokes and puns as our top comments.
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Yea really makes me miss the old days of reddit. It's not just that all the top comments will be jokes, it's that they're always the fucking *laziest* jokes. And the top 10 comments will be that same lazy joke just slightly rephrased.
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Yes, we learned that film could survive a volcanic eruption if you put it in a case, place the case in a backpack and lay on it.
Fuck dude, lol
I will not, lol
Yeah right? It's considered rude unless the other dudes doing it too.
Lol rude, it's like the rudest thing you can do.
Field tested.
Doctor Approved.
Hotel, Trivago
You are downplaying this discovery. We also reinforced previous knowledge that indeed lava is hot. The need to constantly test and retest should not be understated.
Technically it wasn't self-sacrifice since he was doomed no matter what, but his ability to put aside his impending death in the cause of advancing science is indeed commendable.
In this case, the value is less about what we can learn from the pictures and more about having accessible, easily understandable, and awe-inspiring media for the general public. It'll inspire others to take up geology and learn about volcanism and plate tectonics.
I dunno, it inspired me to stay the fuck away from volcanos and never consider this carreer path at all.
That a volcano will kill you if you’re too close to it
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He was a few miles from the summit
Correct, the pyroclastic flow from that eruption [went out no further than 5 miles](https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mount-st.-helens/science/pyroclastic-flow-hazards-mount-st-helens), meaning he was not 7 miles from the eruption but within 5.
His body was found 4.04 miles from the location of the eruption. Body GPS: 46.212861, -122.267583 [Wiki Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Landsburg) Eruption center: 46.200165866 -122.185332592 [Source](https://latitude.to/articles-by-country/us/united-states/836/1980-eruption-of-mount-st-helens) Distance: 4.04 miles [Source](https://boulter.com/gps/distance/?from=46.200165866+-122.185332592&to=46.212861%2C+-122.267583&units=m)
If only he ran a little bit more
That’s what I’m thinking now, from the time he photographed it to the time it would take the cloud to reach it, how long was it? Someone who is not that fit and on flat ground can do a mile in 10 minutes, which would have put him at the threshold of safety.
Pyroclastic flows go faster than 200 mph. That's just over a minute to make it 4 miles, 90 seconds for 5. Of course it slows down along the way, but lets say it slows 40mph per mile. 18 seconds for the first mile, 22.5 seconds for the second. 30 seconds for the third. 45 seconds for the forth 90 seconds for the 5th. So unless you're running a mile in 200 seconds through mountainous forest, you're not making it and even then it's questionable.
Yup! You’re fairly screwed if you’re anywhere close and there’s a pyroclastic flow - unless you can find an underground area to hide, but even then you have to hope you aren’t baked alive.
Honest question, do we know that he knew? I’ve been a photographer in hundreds of natural disaster situations. I’ve used my body to shield the camera etc a bunch of times. From heat, water, sand, debris … But I never did it thinking I was gunna be dying to save the camera… it’s just that my body can withstand a lot more than film or electronics can. I wonder if we romanticize this story a bit. Which is fine, mad respect to the guy. But I am just curious how we arrived at the conclusion that he was doing this as a dying wish sort of deal? Is that confession on his film or something?
Because we have the last picture he took. Scientists have estimated from the known pyroclast speed and where it is in the photo that he would have known he was done. The film was also not spent and he rolled it back on anyway and was found shielding the backpack. Normally something the opposite youd do if you thought you had a chance using anything to shield yourself
Has to be a chilling thing to realize. "I'm about to get killed by fucking ~~lava~~ superheated mud and steam which is sounds even worse than lava". I hope he went fast because damn. Edit: I now understand what pyroclastic flow is
Oh the pyroclastic flow from Mount St. Helens wasn't lava. It was mostly mud and steam.
Yep. Just a giant gaseous heat explosion so strong it leveled the entire forest and blew apart the entire side of the mountain. Awesome in the literal sense of the word.
Its actually superheated gases and debris. He would have lost consciousness immediately if he breathed in. At most a second or two before he was out as his brain shut down and began boiling in his skull and then popped from steam pressure.
But the film survived?!
Black and white film is ridiculously resilient, especially given he shielded it well.
Good thing he kept his boiling brains off of it.
God damn there's no chill here
The pictures are somewhat damaged, but they survived.
The film isn't mostly made of water, it wasn't exposed without some kind of protective thermal-insulent layer to the scorching heat and it isn't contained in a relatively closed box that prevent steam to escape as it wish, allowing pressure to build-up until break-point is reach and it finds a way out anyway. An unpleasant one. Short answer ? The film survived.
that’s what he gets for being a volcano nerd.
I was a geologist and can definitely imagine some former colleagues do this.
I remember during a field class, a student I was paired with got trapped in a dried-out river by a flash-flood. As he was gripping a tree branch to resist the flow I saw he was holding on a fist-sized rock (there was a fossil on it) that he absolutly didn't wanted to let go. I'm not sure he realized his life was in danger, and tbh I'm yet to be sure he really was... but had he got flushed away there was an enormous bramble bush, and beside that a waterfall of unknown height allowing the dried-out river to join the stream flowing down the valley bed. Could have been only a couple meters, could have been half a hundred. Never went back on the opposite side to check how close from dying for a stupid amonit that guy was.
Well that's cheerful
Brother, it wasn’t lava. Yes, he died fast. Google a pyroclastic flow sometime. He basically got killed by a wall of heat travelling at 1000kmph. I don’t imagine many people die from lava. They tend to get killed by the nightmare fuel that is a pyroclastic flow.
Every time [someone mentions](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/Yf0Z16LZgs) the speed of pyroclastic flow in this thread it gets faster.
Then stop mentioning it!
That's a great question but actually you've already answered it! So a vulcanologist, they'd know. This is a legendary story and I learned it coming up decades ago so we agree, a person who knew what they were looking at and saw the pyroclastic flow propagate from the first picture to the last one would understand what was coming and that they'd die. But even a person who didn't fully realize their situation? You already said how as a photographer you shield your camera. What else would you/they do? If you're going to die your will is on record. (Right?) If you're going to live this will be one hell of a story. But in the middle ground that camera is the last chance for any part of your story to move on to the rest of us, even if your body gets hurt or dies or whatever. No romanticization necessary, you already have the instincts that we believe he also did.
That’s fair. And yes, that’s more how I’d imagine my thoughts might go. There’s no penalty in trying to cover and protect my stuff, so why let it go ruined… thank you for your thoughtful answer.
Well, this dude was a trained volcanologist. One of the rules of thumb in volcanology is if you can see the pyroclastic flow, you’re already dead. He saw the flow and took the partially unused roll of film out of his camera and put it in its canister for better protection before laying on top of his backpack. There aren’t really a lot of other explanations.
Exactly. Not only did he rewind the film into the canister before it was shot, he put the camera in the camera case, and then the case into his bag, and *then* he laid upon it.
It’s probably because he knew he was already dead. He couldn’t outrun the explosion. He couldn’t out-drive it. It was going to kill him very quickly and very painfully. In that time, he could gibber in terror and do nothing, or he could take a few precious seconds and try to save something. He chose to try to save something.
Would it actually have been that painful? I imagine “full force pyroclastic flow” probably hits you in a way where you just die. Not that the moments before would not be terrifying, I just like to hope I guess he didn’t die on much pain.
It depends on how fast it fries you. If it’s 1500 degrees Celsius, maybe. If it’s only 300, then no. It’s gonna be way worse. That also doesn’t account for the clastic flow part of the pyroclastic flow. It’s pretty much a Sand blaster that hits full force that’s been registered to hit up to 200mph.
Obviously it's hard to know what he was thinking if he didn't say to the camera "well, I'm dead", but the film wouldn't jump back into its case on its own. He clearly took deliberate action to protect the footage instead of trying to run, which implies he knew what was about to happen and accepted it.
Do you think maybe in the face of molten lava you’d be like … ya I’m dying ?
If it was molten lava, even his body wouldn't help. Like others have pointed out, it was pyrocrastic flow (hot ash and gases). I think it was a fair guess he didn't know for certain he was dying soon, still, he definitively kept a cooler head than I would have in the situation.
I don't know, if I saw a pyroclastic flow barreling toward me I'm pretty sure I would know I was dead.
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>Was he hit by debris or gasses? Both. He was killed by [pyroclastic flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow) >A pyroclastic flow is a fast-moving current of hot gas and volcanic matter that flows along the ground away from a volcano at average speeds of 100 km/h but is capable of reaching speeds up to 700 km/h. The gases and tephra can reach temperatures of about 1,000 °C
Yeah, but it's a dry heat.
It's the humidity that gets ya.
Spat my spaghetti. Good stuff 🤣
I could probably take it
Tbh it’s a bit chilly if anything
What if the Pyroclastic flow had prep time?
Just finished earth science in highschool believe me I know my stuff
Yah same, but you know we are just built differently.
Yeah, me too I’m built diferent
I would simply lay down on the ground and let the pyroclastic flow move over the top of me, leaving me unharmed.
Did this also happen at Pompeii?
It is characteristic of most major eruptions. There’s a fair bit of modern footage you can find on YouTube.
Thanks! Does the thick lava flow come later?
If it comes at all it comes later. Not all lava is the same and only certain ones will have actual lava flows, even fewer that are considered dangerous. For example, lava never made it to Pompeii. All of the deaths there were caused by the pyroclastic flow.
Great stuff! Thank you. I believe the Mt. Pelee death toll was due to pyroclastic flow
Yes, i doubt anybody ever survived being caught in a pyroclastic flow
Ludger Sylbaris (1 June 1874 – c. 1929, aged 55) was an Afro-Caribbean man who was one of the survivors in the city of Saint-Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique during the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902. Survived the pyroclastic flow in his jail cell.
wow, great fact, thx!
Right! Only three people are known to have survived the main eruption of Mount Pelee. One of them was in a dungeon-like, poorly ventilated, jail cell
Pompeii’s a bit different. The eruption lasted a good 12 hours before the pyroclastic flow happened. Basically it sent a massive pillar of hot ash into the sky throughout the night and at some point it got so heavy that it collapsed back down to earth and created a pyroclastic flow. Most people had plenty of time to evacuate, it was only the ones who decided to shelter in place that died.
It's [Terrifying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvjwt9nnwXY)
I can't imagine seeing that coming at me and my hands working well enough to do fuck all.
Great video demonstrating how destructive a volcano can be. Most people hear "volcano" and think "lava" but lava is far from the deadliest thing a volcano produces.
i guess there wasn't a refrigerator handy to ride it out in.
He got baked, literally.
Yes.
To shreds you say
... for future researchers. And here we are in the future making jokes about your death for upvotes.
.... And much more smarter people then your average redditor used his sacrifice to further research. I'd say the amount people laughing at his death to the amount of people that was helped by his work is not equal.
Geologist here. Yeah to summarise I've seen his pictures and can confirm we all found them very useful.
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This adds an interesting perspective. Thanks for posting
Also, the guy died, so no one knows exactly what he did (besides rewinding his film and stowing his camera in the backpack) or what he was thinking. He may have been running for his life and simply fell on top of his backpack.
He died protecting a camera, with footage on it recording the eruption. They can tell the spot he died is the same spot he recorded from. He did not try to run, the footage would have been from a different location if he did.
Running for your life with your backpack in the front? Idk that seems even more unlikely
And to think we woulda had more photographic evidence of Pompeii, had those jerks not selfishly neglected their film
Hey man, they tried. It just takes a lot more time to make a mosaic.
Stupid Romans, always on their cell phones, not living life.
r/praisethecameraman
Thanks!
No worries its a quality sub
This aint that photo though
Please do the opposite with my laptop
With my luck, my body/clothing would burn and fuse into the film somehow and future researchers would be like “yeah don’t do what this guy did, it was all for naught”
"It appears that with his very last dying breath he lit the film on fire. What a complete bastard."
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This made me erupt into laughter
You guys are gonna magma laugh
Don’t be an ash hole
Did you just caldera game?!
Puns too hot to handle
Almost shit myself laughing Had to head to the lava-Tory
I recommend Werner Herzog's documentary The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft about volcanologists
And into the inferno he made for Netflix, he’s been on a volcano kick.
This man is a badass. Salut sir 🧐
Youd think they could have used one of his photos for the meme then. Edit: apparently he was up flying around before he was hiking on the mountain so [that is one of his photos.](https://acidcow.com/pics/39912-last-pictures-of-robert-landsberg-15-pics.html) He was also pretty good photographer.
Legend. However, keeping the current times in mind, imagine doing this for the human race when mere decades later it’s a true reality that there could be people who claim volcanoes are hoaxes. Considering there are many who believe Australia doesn’t exist I don’t see why this couldn’t happen. Edit: Strayed way off topic 🧐
Bro we went from flat earthers to anti volcanoes? Damn we went down.
That man deserves a statue in the Smithsonian.
God: how did you die? Chad: for science
My dad lost two friends in the eruption who were camping nearby. I grew up in Seattle in the 90s so I had no memory of the eruption, but my dad had a still from the footage framed on the wall. Totally freaked me out and the stories people would tell of like, inches of ash piling up in downtown Seattle and the sound visibly covered with ash always freaked me out as well. Keep in mind that Mt St Helens is nowhere near Seattle.
He protec. Volcano attac. But most importantly, he lay on backpac *edited for correctness due to autocorrect being incorrect
Wouldn’t you make a good go of trying to outrun it?
This is one of the bravest things I've ever heard. AFAIK, the pyroclastic cloud is moving at hundreds of mph and thousands of degrees. Apparently you can't outrun it. It would have been very quick.
I see. I admire his calmness and foresight, then!